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Topic: They need to have a sibling (Read 29296 times)

Spoiled kids are spoiled because the adults in their lives aren't doing their jobs. It has nothing to do with the number of siblings*. Wish them well if they want more kids. Keep in the back of your mind some people think - If I'm not doing what everyone else is doing I'm doing something wrong. That is why they want you to agree to them. They are to weak willed to be their own person - they need you to agree and follow the same path to validate them. You don't need to do that.

*I once said the above to a person giving my cousin a hard time for having only one child. Cousin's child was behaving beautifully. The person making comments about only children all being spoiled had 4 hellions running around unchecked causing all sorts of problems and the "parents" had no control. My cousin could barely keep it together - and burst out laughing was we walked away. Don't get me wrong there is a time and place for kids to act like hellions and run and scream (our farm for one). An evening wedding just isn't one of them.

Them: "Are you going to have another child?"You: "I don't discuss my family planning with other people--it's sort of private."

then...depending how it goes:

Them: "But she needs a sibling!"You: "As I said, I don't discuss my family planning. How's the bean dip?"

or

Them: "But I was just making conversation!"You: "That's all right; I understand. I just don't have conversations about my family planning. Let's find another topic. How's the bean dip?"

And remember that wonderful third-grader trick: rolling your eyes. OK, maybe you can't do it literally, but you can mentally do it. Just look at them, think "insert eye roll here," and silently walk away.

Is there a polite way to respond to this? DD is an only child and this is by choice for many reasons. People do ask if we're going to have another child, and most are polite when I tell them DD is an only child. But there is a subset who feel the need to announce "well we're going to have another child because I had a sibling and my daughter/son needs a sibling."

Um, great? I'm not against people having siblings if that's what they mean. It's just not in the cards for DD. Do I bean dip? Some say it defiantly like they need to defend their multi-child decision versus my only child decision. On the plus side this comes up less the older I get.

"Wonderful! Isn't it great how everybody gets to plan their own families?" :-D

"Wonderful! Isn't it great how everybody gets to plan their own families?" :-D

Love it!

A child's social skills/tendency to be spoiled/entitlement mentality has absolutely nothing to do with the number of siblings they have. I have two siblings, but that's not the reason I'm not a spoiled brat. I'm not a spoiled brat because my grandparents raised me not to be one.

I know several people who are only children. They're all pretty well-adjusted and I only know one who is spoiled, and I highly, highly doubt that her being an only child had anything to do with that. That situation was more like her whole mother's side of the family are spoiled, entitlement-mentality people, and unfortunately, she kind of got that way too.

Another point - I don't see how people have the audacity to make these sorts of comments when they may not know the situation surrounding it. For some people, having one child is totally by choice. For some though, it's definitely not a choice. I know another only child, a cousin of mine, who is one because her mother had a rather complicated pregnancy with her, and they chose not to risk going through that again. Had it not been for that, perhaps she may have had some siblings. For someone who can't/won't have another child for medical reasons, a comment like that could be very, very upsetting.

Either way, by choice or not, your reproductive system and how you choose to use it, and how many times you choose to use it, is no one's business but your own. I think bopper's response would do pretty well to shut them down.

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"Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don't fit into boxes." -Tori Amos

DS is an only child. I had a difficult pregnancy so DH and I decided one healthy one was just fine. He's a great kid. Anyone who tried telling me I'd regret not giving him siblings was told "No, I'd regret endangering my health and perhaps leaving him without a mother."

By contrast, my physical therapist and his wife had their third child last year. They have great kids. He gets asked "Holy Deity, don't you have enough kids?!". He gives them the Spock eyebrow raise followed by "How is it your business?".

We have two girls and people keep asking if we're going to "try" for a boy. No matter what you have, people seem to have something to say.

I have three boys. People are constantly asking me if I'm going to try for a girl. Oh ehell no! Deity knew what he was doing when he gave me all boys. I have an adolescent sister right now and I'm living with my parents and I swear there are days when I want to wring the child's neck for things that I know are just typical girl type behavior. That's not to say that boys don't have their issues, but my temperament is far better suited to deal with the boy issues.

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Some people lift weights. I lift measures. It's a far more esoteric workout. - (Quoted from a personal friend)

Yeah, I think no matter what, sometimes nosy/thoughtless people are going to find something to comment on. One kid? You need more. Having a fourth kid? Way too many. Two boys? You need a girl. Two girls? You need a boy. Aren't you a little young, aren't you a little old, aren't they too far apart, aren't they too close together... Sometimes I don't think these comments come from any deep philosophy, they're just inane chatter that people have heard and are repeating, without thinking about the implications of what they're saying. A polite but cool brush-off is probably the best.

On the other hand, if someone is talking about their own choices, or seems really interested in why you chose to do this or that, you could hear them out and discuss if you felt comfortable with the topic. Or if not, you could say something like, "Oh, that's nice. Wow, the weather's been nice, huh?"

Some people feel more comfortable talking about intimate topics--my friend Amy, for example, knows all about the reproductive choices, medical problems, monetary issues, etc. with all members of her extended family, and has no problem sharing them with me in a matter-of-fact way. Then I'll tell her something that happened with one of my cousins, and she'll ask me all kinds of probing questions that I have no answer to, because we're much more private. If she ever came to a gathering of my extended family, she would probably come off as alternately nosy and oversharing in comparison, but that's just what's normal to her.

It is an modern and interesting assumption that children only appear when planned, and that, if planned, they invariably appear. Mother Nature has something to do with it. In fact, "That would be up to Mother Nature," would, I think, be my consistent response.

I have a cousin, let's call her Loretta. She got pregnant easily and had kids young. We both have another cousin, let's call her Anna. She got married for the first time in her late 30s and, for the most part, only married him because she wanted kids.

I had a conversation with Loretta that went like this:

Loretta: "Anna has been married over a year now. She's nearly 40. Are they going to have kids or not?"

Me: "I don't know. It's not my business."

Loretta: "Well, does she want kids?"

Me: "Yes."

Loretta: "So, why haven't they had kids?"

Me: "Not everyone gets pregnant as soon as they want to."

Loretta: "So she hasn't been able to get pregnant?"

Me: "I don't know."

Then, Loretta emailed Anna on her own and although I didn't ask, Loretta told me that her exchange with Anna went like:

Loretta: "Are you expecting? When are you going to have kids?"

Anna: "When Deity blesses us."

Loretta wrote to me and said "Doesn't Anna know she shouldn't wait around for Deity?"

I said "What do you want Anna to do? They're dirt poor. IF they're unable to get pregnant, they don't have the money for fertility treatments."

I did remind Loretta that when I got married, she asked me every time she talked to me "Are you expecting yet?" And luckily, DH and I didn't want kids right away, instead of wanting them and having problems carrying to term, so I was only annoyed, not hurt. I told her she needed to back off and she could be causing pain. She didn't get it. I don't know why not.

I've only ever had one person push this with me. When she said, "But your daughter needs a playmate!" I smiled sweetly and told her that she has plenty of playmates at school. I then abruptly changed the subject.

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"Submission to what people call their 'lot' is simply ignoble. If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another." - Elizabeth von Arnim

This reminds me of how my nephew handled the "Do you think it's going to be a boy or a girl?" question when his sister was expected.

That's a really stupid question, really, if you take it literally--how the heck would HE know? And he was smart enough to see if for what it was.

So he answered, "They won't tell me. I think it's going to be a giraffe." Very seriously.

Oh I hate when the Nosy Nellie's decide they have to interrogate the children because you won't give them the answer to their intrusive questions. My poor older DD went through hell from being asked "wouldn't you love to have a brother or sister?" to, when I very surprisingly found myself pregnant when she was 10, oh, what do you want a brother or sister? Honestly, it doesn't matter what she wanted...basic science tells you wishing for one or the other is not how the gender of the baby is decided. And because she has my smart aleck streak she would tell the idiots who bothered her about being an only child " My cat is my brother."

We've faced something similar to this! My in laws used to constantly fuss because our child was going to be "so much younger" than DH's brothers kids that our poor child wouldn't have any same aged cousins to play with.

It sounds like people are just trying to justify their own decisions to someone who hasn't made the same ones.

"Well our little Billy NEEDS a brother!""I'm sure he'll enjoy that."

"Well you simply must have another baby, poor little Billy needs a brother!""Billy does just fine."